In general, certain pathologies manifest as abnormalities in the tissues of a subject or patient. While these abnormalities may not be detectable during a routine exam, symptoms of the pathology may cause a diagnosing professional to recommend and/or administer various imaging scans of a subject to obtain images of suspect tissues/areas. Existing systems for reviewing imaging scans rely on human interaction and are prone to misclassification and misidentification of pathologies. While diagnosing and treating irregularities in patients is often time-critical and urgent, the time required to confidently identify and/or classify the presence, location and/or extent of such irregularities and normal tissues through contemporary methods is typically great, often at the risk of a patient's health.
Besides consuming time at a time-critical moment, contemporary methods of identifying and/or classifying the presence, location and/or extent of such irregularities and normal tissues require great expertise. Typically today's imagers are required to be licensed and board certified and complete medical school training and years of postgraduate training in the form of a residency. Even still, misidentification and/or misclassification occurs often and second or third opinions may be required. As a result, experts capable of reviewing imaging scans for irregularities are rarely readily accessible, causing more of a time delay, are not always correct, and may increase medical expenses.
Also, while such imaging scans are used around the world to classify and identify irregularities, interaction and collaboration between doctors is either rare or impossible in many circumstances. In fact, some pathologies may be undetectable by the human eye. For example, while a doctor in one country may have a special ability to identify a particular irregularity, another doctor in another country may lack such an ability and cannot access such information. As a result, today's methods of reviewing imaging scans and identifying and/or classifying irregularities has resulted in a wealth of information that cannot easily be shared.
Furthermore, many patients around the world have limited access to healthcare and particularly lack access to such experts as would be able to identify rare diseases by reviewing medical scans through contemporary methods. As the cost of machines capable of generating imaging scans decreases through advancing technology, the world population is increasing and thus the ratio of patients to doctors throughout the world is growing at an increasing rate. Thus methods and systems of identifying such irregularities without the requirement of a trained medical expert is greatly needed.
Finally, in some cases, a diagnosing professional may review whether a pathology has changed over time. In any event, this assessment of change is susceptible to interpretation error, inter-observer variation, variations in scan quality, and is generally subjective in nature. As such, proper patient care using contemporary techniques may require routine reviews of medical scans. Accordingly, today's imaging experts may be incapable of personally reviewing each and every scan of every potential irregularity throughout the world in the short time that a patient may need such a review.